FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Olson Peak

Mineral County, MT 30-foot pole L-4 tower on the Lolo NF, built 1934, in ruins by 1992, listed as gone; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Firelookout.com says the tower was in ruins by 1992; the FFLA Montana list marks it gone.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.38882, −115.05933
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-olson-peak

View from the cab

What the lookout saw from its cab: every ridge out to about 93 miles, the named peaks in sight, and other fire lookouts within view, worked out from terrain data in your browser.

This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 4.2 MB of terrain data the first time.

Or see what it could see on the map: the ground in its line of sight.

History

Then and now

  1. 1934 BuiltFirelookout.com says the tower was built in 1934Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1992
  3. 1992 EventIn ruins by 1992, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  4. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

Old maps of this spot

USGS topographic maps from the years a lookout stood may show it, often as a small symbol labelled “Lookout”. See the old topo maps around it on the Firefinder map, or find every scanned sheet of this spot on USGS TopoView (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Olson Peak in Mineral County, Montana, held a 30-foot pole tower of the L-4 design on the Lolo National Forest, about 7 miles north-northeast of St. Regis, at an elevation of 5,274 feet.1 The Forest Lookouts page places it at township 19 north, range 27 west, section 20.2

Firelookout.com dates the tower to 1934 and says it had fallen into ruins by 1992.1

The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the tower as gone and gives its coordinates as 47.38882 north and 115.05933 west.3 The same list has a different Olson Peak in Lewis & Clark County, also marked gone, so check the county before relying on a name alone.3

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public may visit it.

  1. Olson Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/olsonpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Olson Peak, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/olson-peak1.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  2. firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page Gave us: links firelookout.com · No licence stated on the site; facts only (coordinates, elevation, built/destroyed years, design, agency). Photos mirrored with the site's stated credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: agency, ownership, links Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts sites (westlookouts, californialookouts, idaholookouts, montanalookouts, oregonlookouts and washingtonlookouts .weebly.com) · No licence stated; facts only (county, land manager, status word, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, township-range-section, height and design hints, links). The site's own newspaper quotes, citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, dates, links, fact-check Firefinder research (sources cited in the story footnotes) · Our own research notes; each fact cites its source in the lookout's story

More about this lookout elsewhere

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.